This invention relates to a business application development and execution environment that recognizes and supports various development and user roles. Aspects of the method and system are adapted to builders, assemblers, power users and end users of business applications.
The advent of spreadsheets and the proliferation of disparate and distributed data sources have transformed business analysis. A resourceful analyst may seek out information from a dozen disparate sources, including spreadsheets, databases, online sources, reports and the like. This typically is a manual process that involves spreadsheets, reports and paper trails. This manual process is often incomplete or inaccurate, as some data sources may be missing, inaccurately entered, poorly correlated, short of being enterprise-wide, or outdated by the time the data is analyzed. While spreadsheets are handy for analyzing data, they provide little assistance in collecting data.
The calculations produced by spreadsheets may be numbers that are relatively difficult to interpret. An analyst faced with presenting data to executives will typically prepare charts and graphs to express the numbers generated by spreadsheets. Spreadsheets are not well adapted to codifying institutional knowledge about how to interpret the numbers that they generate.
Integrated development environments (IDE), which are more powerful than spreadsheets, typically are directed to builders or computer programmers. For instance, Forte, is an IDE available from Sun Microsystems that allows builders to see the results of their programs as the programs run and are debugged. Like other IDE's, Forte expects the user to write program code, which requires familiarity with programming and with proper manipulation of data sources.
An early version of Cogency Software's Cogency Wisdom product, released more than a year before filing of this patent application, provided an IDE directed to builders. It provided a visual interface for entry of code that implemented rules and allowed execution without compiling in an interpretive execution environment. This made it easier to support business analysis, but the earlier version was not a product suitable for power users or assemblers, as it required a builder-level understanding of data and coding.
At the other end of the project-to-product spectrum, service-oriented organizations, such as SunGard or Oracle make it their business to deliver complete, customized applications. These service-oriented organizations work with the client, such as a business analyst, to develop requirements or adapt off-the-shelf packages to customer requirements. They develop software and modify existing software to meet the needs outlined by the client. They typically are working with builder-level tools that are not readily accessible to clients, much less to client power users or application assemblers.
Some organizations develop their own analysis tools on a multi-vendor basis. These multi-vendor solutions are vulnerable to ongoing industry consolidation, for instance efforts by Oracle to take over PeopleSoft for the latter's client base, not for its technology.
Therefore, an opportunity arises to provide better tools for analytical business applications. A layered environment could be provided, adapted to the respective expertises of builders, assemblers, power users, ordinary users and executives. Tools could be provided to builders with which to build data encapsulation objects, from which assemblers could develop analytical applications. Assemblers could implement analytical applications without needing to be familiar with details of obtaining data from disparate data sources and without having to explain to builders their ever-changing and ever-evolving requirements.